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Island/Synopsis
The Bomb A nuclear accident incinerates a civilian yacht, killing family members who had infiltrated a weapons testing area. Their intention had been to stage an armed protest designed to expose and halt the development of unimaginably horrific new weapons of mass destruction. Lawyer Jonathan Studeman investigates the accident for the U.S. president and learns that unidentified conspirators inside the testing program helped with the infiltration. An adopted Amerasian child has survived, stranded at an island campsite with his Caucasian-American mother and adopted Japanese sister. The mother and sister have swallowed poison and died. Studeman recognizes the dead mother as the woman who gave him a letter addressed to the vice president a month earlier. He confronts the vice president and discovers that the letter was a warning about the planned protest, and a plea for help. The lead conspirator, psychiatrist Dr. Isaac Levanthal, arranges for the child to be secretly adopted by members of a religious cult in Indianapolis, Indiana, and tells Studeman that the child has died and been interred with his mother and sister on the island where they were discovered. Confrontation Three years later, the conspirators learn that one among them is a traitor, a child-abuser, and a fugitive war criminal who all along had been spying on them for a right-wing extremist Army general. The general commands Federal peacekeeping troops who are deployed to enforce a controversial ruling by the Supreme Court. Intending to kill the child he had once abused, the fugitive war criminal firebombs the Indianapolis church that is headquarters of the religious cult, killing children and seriously injuring the adopted child. Tipped off by the extremist general who hates them but fears being implicated in the firebombing, the conspirators capture and kill the fugitive, and dispose of his body. Crisis Three years later, the vice president is running for president. Studeman distrusts him and gives a copy of the warning letter to his opponent. An obscure reference in the letter implicates the vice president in a disastrous CIA plot to overthrow the elected leader of a foreign country. The opponent makes clever use of the information and defeats the vice president in a close election. Studeman has a new hobby, raising hamsters in a cage. And, he has bought a necklace and a Goddess-of-Justice pendant as a gift for his long-time assistant, Angela, who was recently engaged to be married. As Studeman insists, Angela accepts the gift even though she has been forced to break off the engagement. The pendant is in an expensive jewelry box, with an inscription that reads, in part, "opens not but from within." The island, meanwhile, has become a secret nuclear shelter under a government war-survivability program administered by Levanthal. When a military crisis erupts early in the new president's administration, vast quantities of gold bullion are secretly moved to and permanently stored at the shelter. The child is now Hideo Shin, grown to become the leader of his own survivalist cult under the influence of Levanthal. Hideo tells his followers that he is visited in dreams by the prophesying spirit of his natural mother, a Korean woman who left him in a orphanage. As the FBI continues to investigate the firebombing, Studeman learns what became of the child he rescued from the island. He visits Hideo's church in Los Angeles and falls in love with Hideo's adoptive mother, Kimiko, who is now divorced. Hideo and Kimiko ask Studeman to help rescue Kimiko's young daughter Maya, who remains with her father in the clutches of the Indianapolis cult. Assassination The following year, on a guided tour of Hideo Shin's "secret tunnel" in the mountains of Southern California, Studeman falls and is nearly killed, an apparent accident. His life is saved by a young black boy named Ronnie, whose parents are members of Hideo's survivalist cult. The conspirators plan to use the cult to illicitly acquire great wealth and power, promising cult members that in this way they will survive a prophesied nuclear holocaust. To prevent exposure, they try to kill the right-wing general and the now-suspicious lawyer, Studeman. But the patsy they have chosen for the job assassinates the president instead. Shock Five years later, the former vice president is elected president. The conspirators and the religious cult led by Hideo Shin launch an assault on the island shelter, intending to seize the U.S. reserves of gold bullion and flee to a secret refuge. They possess two nuclear torpedoes acquired from Russia, and they threaten devastation if stopped. The assault is foiled by Studeman with the help of a young defector from the cult. The defector is Ronnie, the boy who once saved Studeman's life. But the assault triggers a meltdown of the island's nuclear reactor. The U.S. reserves of gold bullion are melted and fused with coral rock. And Studeman himself is framed, arrested and imprisoned with the cult members, who accuse him of being the lead conspirator. The president believes the loss of gold reserves and the missing nuclear weapons are facts that must remain secret. He shocks the nation by announcing new economic policies that effectively end the monetary use of gold, and he asks Isaac Levanthal, who is now Director of the Bureau of Prisons, to create a secret facility for isolating the imprisoned cult. Scandal The president now has even greater reason to fear the contents of the warning letter. If revealed it would incite an investigation not only of his role, long ago, in the CIA's plot, but also of the accident that caused the death of the woman and her family, and of the island where the shelter had been created. He engages in illegal acts in an effort to recover all copies of the letter, the original of which he knows was retained by Studeman. A string of burglaries linked to the White House raise the ire of Congress. On the verge of being impeached, the president is forced to resign. Crash Fearing the new president will uncover their plans, Levanthal and the conspirators attempt to kill Studeman as he is being transferred by rail. They cause a derailment, but in the wreckage Studeman escapes. With the help of Ronnie, Kimiko, and his former assistant and current defense lawyer, Angela, the fugitive Studeman maneuvers to expose Levanthal. Former members of the Indianapolis cult board a flight to Washington where they expect to meet with the new president. But the plane crashes on Mt. Weather in Virginia, and Studeman and Kimiko are believed to have perished. Massacre Ronnie rescues Hideo Shin's sister Maya from the original Indianapolis cult just as all its members are dying in a mass murder-suicide. He sails with her and Angela toward the island where Studeman believed Hideo's first adoptive mother was secretly buried. En route, he explains to them that he had guessed where Studeman hid the warning letter, and that upon reading it he had figured out what even Studeman and Hideo Shin never knew: the Caucasian woman who wrote the letter was actually Hideo Shin's natural mother; and the Korean woman who had prophesied to Hideo "in dreams" was just a light-and-mirrors illusion created by Isaac Levanthal. War Arriving at the island to recover the remains of Hideo's natural mother, Ronnie, Maya and Angela are surrounded and taken prisoner by men and women wearing robes and pointed hoods. Brought underground, they discover what Studeman and Ronnie had suspected all along. The island shelter has been transformed into a secret Federal prison lorded over by Levanthal and housing Hideo Shin and all the members of his cult. The cult believes that the civilization-ending holocaust has already happened, and that they are surviving in an underground shelter. And in fact, the United States is already fighting a limited proxy war against Russia, which has invaded a country in Southwest Asia, and Levanthal intends to transform the cult's illusion into reality by using the weapons he controls to ignite an all-out nuclear war. Detonation Meanwhile, however, Studeman and Kimiko, who were never on board the plane that crashed, have gotten through to the U.S. president and convinced him of the truth. Warships are fast approaching the island. Trapped within the shelter-prison, Levanthal uses a code to remotely detonate one of the nuclear devices hidden far away. He uses another code to set a timer that will explode the remaining nuclear torpedo when the warships arrive, obliterating them and anyone who remains on the island. Before Levanthal can make his escape, Ronnie and Maya reveal to Hideo how he has been deceived and manipulated by Levanthal his entire life. Hideo attacks and kills Levanthal, who was the only person who knew the code needed to stop the denotation. Liberation But Ronnie has observed that each code was an anagram composed of the same 14 letters rearranged into a different short phrase. Based on his knowledge of Levanthal's past, he is able to deduce the needed code and prevent denotation in the nick of time. Ronnie and Maya have fallen in love. Studeman, vindicated and freed, marries Kimiko. Angela is reunited with her former fiancee. At the engagement party, Studeman reveals that he had given the original copy of the warning letter to Angela, who never knew she had it. It was hidden in a false bottom in the jewelry box. Placing a hamster inside and then closing and locking the box, Studeman demonstrates how the false bottom opens when the hamster claws at an exposed tripwire. Asked, "what happens now?," he tosses the letter into the fireplace, saying, "we get on with our lives."